Summary

This paper from the NHS Confederation’s Mental Health Network (MHN) discusses the challenges facing mental health services during the next ten to twenty years. It considers changes to population demographics, new technologies, increasing demand, financial constraints in the NHS, plus the increasing importance of integrated care and the recovery movement in mental health.

“The Alzheimer’s Society estimates that, as of 2012, there were 800,000 people in the UK with a form of dementia. By 2021 this is projected to rise to 1 million, and then to 1.7 million by 2051”… By 2030 there will be approximately 2 million more adults in the UK with mental health problems”. (p.3)